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Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 15, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org
Our new mission statement says that we “build the Beloved Community”. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. defined it, that’s a huge dream though. We do not do it alone. We do so as part of a rich Unitarian Universalist heritage and our larger UU movement, as well as in partnership with many other faiths and groups. We’ll examine our mission in relationship to these larger efforts.
Call to Worship
Susan Frederick-Gray
We love to celebrate when we were on the right side of history–when we let our faith and commitment to human dignity and commitment to universalism lead us into the practice of justice. But that is not the whole story, and it is important to be honest about our complicated history, not to bring shame or guilt, but to bring understanding that can inform our faith today.
We are in a time of deep challenge and opportunity in our faith. The reality for many is dire, and increasing threats are real. Policies of the state seek to silence, imprison, deport, and even murder people. Our congregations are faced with important questions of how we answer to empire as well as how to wrestle with how close we have come to beloved community–or how far we still have to go. It is important that we not let the opportunity or the urgency of this moment slip away. Like the theme of this year’s GA says, “All are called” to this work, and I believe we have been readying for it.
My hope is that this GA may be one more collective pace forward to “becoming the religious people we want to be,” the religious people we are called to be.
Mission
Together we nourish souls transform lives and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Reading
– Reverend Shirley Strong
“Beloved Community is an inclusive, interdependent space based on love, justice, compassion, responsibility, shared power and a deep and abiding respect for all people, places and things that radically transforms individuals and restructures institutions.”
About Beloved Community
“Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty; hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decencv will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful confict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”
– THE MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Center for Nonviolent Social Change
Sermon
As I listened to you all read that description of the Beloved Community with David earlier, I thought, wow, that is a lot, isn’t it? It is a huge undertaking.
And if you look at the definition of the Beloved Community by the King Center printed on the back of your order of service, it says that building the Beloved Community, means we have to eliminate “poverty, hunger and homelessness”, eradicate “racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice” and abolish “war and military conflict”.
No problem! And if we are going to get all that finished by tomorrow, I am going to have to go ahead and wrap this up early so you all can go get to it.
It is a lot. Dr. King’s vision of the Beloved Community is a big, bold dream, an ultimate outcome that we strive to create.
And, if you’ll notice, we have made it the ultimate outcome toward which we strive here at the church we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice TO build the Beloved Community.
I don’t know about you all, but with the events we see in our news every day, for me that dream can sometimes seem awfully far away. The vision of Beloved Community for which we yearn can seem pretty big and overwhelming.
So, I think it is important that we remember that we do not build the Beloved Community alone. We build the beloved community as a part of something much, much larger than ourselves.
Here in this congregation, we say that we strive to build it together.
And we build it alongside our other local Unitarian Universalist churches, along with a host of local interfaith and secular partners and coalitions.
We build the Beloved Community as part of our larger Unitarian Universalist or UU faith. And our larger UU Faith also has interfaith and secular partners at the regional, national and international levels.
We also build upon the foundation of a rich faith heritage, which has not been perfect at times, and yet was among the first to call for abolition, ordain women and then ordain LGBTQ persons into our ministry, as examples of those foundations upon which we build.
So, please allow me a few moments of indulging my inner polity geek by reviewing with you a little about how our larger Unitarian Universalist Faith is organized.
We are a member congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association or UUA. The UUA is composed of, largely funded through and broadly governed by our UU congregations, fellowships and other organizations.
We elect the UUA board, and we also elect the UUA President, who oversees operations and other UUA staff. The UUA provides a number of programs that support us, represents us regionally and nationally and helps organize our efforts to build the Beloved Community at the national level.
We also have a number of UU organizations with which we partner that are working for justice in specific ways. I’ll mention just a few:
Did you know we have a Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office that has been and continuous to be a highly effective advocate for human rights worldwide?
Likewise, our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, or UUSC, challenges injustice and advances human rights both at home in the U.S. and abroad.
We have a Women’s’ Federation, the Side with Love campaign; two UU specific seminaries, UURise for immigration sanctuary and human rights; our disability rights group EqUUal Access, the UU College of Social Justice (or UUCSJ); Diverse Revolutionary UU Multicultural Ministries or DRUUM; Black Lives ofUU or BLUU; Allies for Racial Equity or ARE; and our professional associations for ministers (the UUMA), religious educators (LREDA) and musicians (the UUMN).
We love ourselves some acronyms, don’t we?
All of these and others are working in their own arenas to build beloved community. And all of these and more are our partners and help make up something much, much larger, of which we are a part.
Whether all of this is already familiar to you or you are hearing about some of it for the first time, I think it is good to remind ourselves that we are not alone in our struggle to build the world about which we dream.
As you heard about earlier, one of the ways we connect with our larger UU movement, is that each year, folks from our church attend the annual UUA General Assembly (or GA for short), where UUs from around the country and even the world gather to worship together each day, conduct UU A business and learn from each other.
The video that was showing as you came in may have given you at least a little sense of the connection to UUism and our traditions that attending GA can create.
I would like to share with you just a few things we did at GA related to building the Beloved Community.
First, we made some internal changes.
Based upon their membership size, churches are allowed to appoint a certain number of their members attending GA as delegates. Delegates are allowed to vote on issues taken up during the assembly.
Ministers have been automatically given delegate status; however, Directors of Religious had not been. Because most churches do not allow staff to also be members, this was effectively keeping our religious educators from having a full voice in their own faith association. I am thrilled to report that we voted to change the UUA bylaws so that active directors of religious education are granted delegate status and allowed that full voice.
Similarly, we have had two, non-voting youth observers to the UUA Board of Trustees. We changed the bylaws to make these full, voting trustee positions to give our youth a greater voice.
More externally focused, We also had a lively discussion about choosing a new congregational study action issue, or CSAI because we need yet another acronym. CSAls are issues that our congregations will then jointly study and engage in social action around.
One of two proposed CSAls was more explicitly focused around undoing white supremacy. It was important to many of our people of color that this more explicit CSAI be the one adopted. They asked Allies for Racial Equity to speak on behalf of it, and I ended up being the ARE representative to do so. Through the magic of people with cell phone cameras, there is video stitched together of it.
VIDEO
Occasionally, I have an opinion or two about something.
After continued good discussion, delegates voted overwhelmingly to select the undoing white supremacy CSAI.
One of our church members, Rob Hirchfeld, recorded a great reflection on how participating in such discussions at GA can challenge and deepen ones own faith.
VIDEO
The delegates also voted to take on a number of urgent social justice issues that you can find out about by searching for “actions of immediate witness” on UUA.org.
Finally, there were real efforts to feature the voices of people of color and other marginalized groups at GA, and, to stress the theme of this years G.A., “All are Called” – we are all in this together, which means we are both not alone in our struggles to build the Beloved Community, and we are each accountable to one another and our faith as we do so. Here are just a few of our UUA President, Susan Frederick-Gray’s powerful words on this:
VIDEO
No time for a casual faith. No time to go it alone.
So far, I have talked about how we build the Beloved Community as part of something larger than ourselves in ways that are very tangible – as part of the UUA, in cooperation with other faiths and groups.
I’d like to close by sharing with you an experience that I think demonstrates my belief that we also do this work as a part of something more intangible, spiritual and even larger.
A few of you may have heard me tell this story from many years ago now. I was still in seminary and serving as a chaplain intern at the old Brakenridge hospital. I’ve changed a few inconsequential details to protect the identity of the other people involved.
One Sunday, I was asked to bring a young woman back to the Intensive Care Unit to see her younger brother. He had just died as the result of an accident at his summer job earlier that same day. She had fought with him before he left for work that morning and needed to say her goodbyes and seek forgiveness before the rest of the family would get there.
As we stood by his bed and she spoke the words she needed to say to him, she suddenly turned and placed her head on my shoulder, cupped a hand over each of my shoulders and collapsed her entire weight onto me.
I hadn’t expected this, and it was as if her body had suddenly become a stone weight and her overwhelming grief was pouring into me though the tears she was crying on my shoulder.
In that moment, I thought I might collapse too.
That I didn’t have the strength, and that we were both going to fall down onto the cold tile floor beneath us.
But we didn’t, and somehow, the experience was as if something was holding me up, so I could keep holding her up.
Rebecca Ann Parker, one of our UU theologians, calls this an “upholding and sheltering presence” that is “alive and afoot in the universe”. Others might simply call this God. Still others might say that it’s some sort of a bio-psychological reserve built deeply into our genes that helps us help others survive so that our species can go on.
I think maybe it was that on a level that is much deeper than words, I sensed that I was a part of and being upheld by my much larger faith tradition and movement that in turn is a part of something even greater.
I was being held up by all the love I have felt and been given and by an even greater love that emanates when we as human beings are at our very best when we glimpse that we are interconnected with each other and the web of all existence in ways that are far more complex than our day to day comprehension can fully grasp.
And that greater love sustains us and gives us strength and moves us toward building the Beloved Community.
It is a love of such power that it makes me believe that peaceful revolution is possible – that someday we really just might eliminate poverty, hunger and homelessness, abolish military conflict and eradicate racism and all forms of oppression.
My beloveds, we are not alone. You are not alone.
We are a part of something almost incomprehensibly larger than ourselves that is calling us all toward divine possibilities we have yet to even fully imagine.
Amen.
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